高中英语北师大版 (2019)选择性必修 第二册Lesson 3 Understanding获奖课件ppt

Unit 5 Education

Understanding

Unit 5 Lesson 3 P36-37.mp3

It seems obvious now how we acquire knowledge and understanding. To start with, we need questions. Then, to find answers, we observe the world around us and study the facts. After that, we consider possible answers and test each to find the right ones. Although today we are more used to typing a few key words into a search engine and waiting for the Internet to give us an answer, modern scientists and thinkers are still solving the world’s problems with this

type of analysis - luckily for us.

However, in the 17th century when Francis Bacon (1561-1626) suggested that this type of thinking was the way to gain knowledge, he was going against the views of the day. Although Bacon held an important rank in King James’ royal court of England, his true interest was not the day-to-day, slow and inefficient working style of the government, but the worthy search for knowledge. This was certainly not the interest of most people in his days. At that time, people believed more in the church than in facts, and people like Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who proved the idea that “the Earth is not the centre of the universe”, were often punished by the church with no one coming to their defence. The church and many people tended to ignore the facts and didn’t want to challenge what they had always comfortably believed. In fact, when Galilei proved that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, instead of believing him, people chose to believe views that were almost 2,000 years old!

It is not surprising that people wanted to believe these primitive ideas as they had been put forward by the great philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE). He said that the Earth must be the centre of the universe because it felt like the Earth was standing still. Galilei disagreed. At first, people approved of his studies and urged him to continue, but later when he proved Aristotle wrong, they grew angry and put him in prison. They didn’t want to abandon what they’d always thought as true. And this is still often true today. People make the assumption

that if someone important and respected says that something is right, then it must be so. But even though Aristotle was a great man who inspired many great scientists and philosophers after him, he was wrong at times. And Galilei also made mistakes. He is now known as the father of astronomy but he believed that the Earth moved round the sun in a perfect circle. He was wrong.

Therefore, our understanding of the world around us is constantly growing and changing. In other words, we learn more every day and none of us can ever sit back and say, “We know it all.” We need to thank the great men of the past for their wisdom. They understood that we don’t know everything and probably never will, as this would mean a world with questions.

We owe so much of our knowledge and understanding of the world to people like Bacon and Galilei, who were brave enough to step out from the shadows of conventional thought in order to find the kingdom of knowledge that today’s civilisation is built upon. These men knew that knowledge and understanding are things to fight for; more vital to a man, and more beneficial to mankind, some might say, than all the money in the world.